Report on the Global HIV/AIDS epidemic

Report on the global HIV/AIDS epidemic - June 2000

old, and 70% are unmarried. Most callers have had a high-school or university education. Less than 20% are women. The Hotline is advertised on bulletin boards,
trains, metros, buses and in Arabic-language newspapers. Although the project originally focused on Greater Cairo, people call in from rural settings and from other
countries where these newspapers are read.
Between September 1996 and May 1998, 18 628 calls were made, averaging nearly
1000 per month - a number that has surpassed all expectations. The anonymity of
the Hotline appears to have provided a vital link to information and counselling services that would not otherwise have been accessible. Through the Hotline, people can
discuss issues such as sexuality, condom use, premarital sex and homosexuality,
which are rarely addressed in public forums. At the time of its evaluation, this was
the only hotline run by a government service in the Middle East and given enough
resources to function effectively.
The right to information about HIV transmission and prevention has sometimes been
denied to young people on the grounds that they are - or should be - sexually abstinent (the reality of young people's sexuality is far more complex than this, however -
see pages 56-59). In some places, therefore, young people are more vulnerable than
their elders because they are less likely to know enough about HIV to protect themselves. An international programme of demographic and health surveys permits a
comparison of knowledge about HIV among teenagers in several countries. Figure 14
shows the proportion of teenagers who do not know how to protect themselves
against HIV. Either they have never heard of AIDS or they think nothing can be done
to avoid the virus, or they think it is not inevitable but cannot name a way of avoiding
it. In four countries where the adult HIV prevalence rate is over 10%, a fifth or more
of girls in their late teens know too little about the virus to protect themselves. Boys
consistently have more knowledge than girls, and this may be one reason why they
have lower HIV rates (see pages 9-10 and 48).
SLack of education: a growing liability
In general, people with more education lead healthier, more productive lives. There
are several reasons for this association: better-educated people generally have
greater access to information than those who are illiterate or uneducated, and they
are more likely to make well-informed decisions and act on that information. In addition, educated people generally have better jobs and greater access to money and
other resources which can help them support healthier lives. These same resources
can, however, be used to buy alcohol, drugs and sex, to move to urban areas where
better jobs are available but HIV infection rates are high, and to otherwise encourage behaviours that increase the risk of becoming infected. When it comes to protection against HIV, is education really an asset?

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